Sterols are steroid alcohols of vegetable and animal origin. Ergosterol is the principal membrane sterol of fungi. It is structurally similar to its animal counter-part, cholesterol, and its higher plant counter-parts, stigmasterol and sitosterol. Though the biosynthesis of ergosterol in fungi involves steps distinct from the other sterols, the pathways in different organisms share several common steps. The lanosterol 14.alpha.-demethylation steps in cholesterol and ergosterol formation in animals and fungi, as well as the obtusifoliol 14.alpha.-demethylation in stigmasterol and sitosterol biosynthesis in plants, both lead to the formation of a double bond between carbons 14 and 15 of the sterol ring. This double bond is then reduced by sterol .DELTA.14 reductase activity. The enzyme is located in the microsomal fraction in pig liver, yeast and Zea mays, and requires NADPH as an electron donor (Marcireau, C., et al., Curr. Genet. 22: 267-272 (1992)).
Genetic studies of ergosterol biosynthesis mainly have been carried out in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Paltauf, F., et al., in Jones E. W., et al., eds., The Molecular and Cellular Biology of the Yeast Saccharomyces, Gene Expression, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1992, pages 434-437). In yeast, ergosterol affects membrane fluidity and permeability and plays an essential role in the yeast cell cycle. Mutations in the biosynthetic pathway are generally recovered by selecting for resistance to polyene antibiotics. Polyenes bind to ergosterol in the plasma membrane and produce pores through which ions can flow leading to cell death. Mutants with lower levels of plasma membrane ergosterol bind less polyene and show increased resistance. This method has permitted the recovery of mutations in many of the genes in the pathway.
A series of polyene-resistant mutants of Neurospora crassa were isolated several years ago, although little work was done at that time to characterize the mutations on a molecular level. Recently, Grindle and co-workers characterized one of these Neurospora crassa mutants, denoted erg-3, and found that it carried a genetic lesion in sterol .DELTA.14 reductase activity (Ellis, S. W., et al., J. Gen. Micro. 137: 267-272 (1992)). The sterol .DELTA.14 reductase gene in S. cerevisiae, denoted ERG24, also has recently been cloned and sequenced (Lorenz, T., and Parks, L.W., DNA and Cell Biol.11: 685-692 (1992)).
Toward the end of the biosynthetic pathway of ergosterol biosynthesis, sterol .DELTA.14 reductase and .DELTA.8-.DELTA.7 isomerase catalyze steps in the conversion of lanosterol to ergosterol. After ignosterol is reduced by sterol .DELTA.14 reductase, the sterol is demethylated and rearranged to fecosterol, which is then isomerized by sterol .DELTA.8-.DELTA.7 isomerase. Mechanism of action studies indicate that several morpholine and structurally related piperidine compounds having large ring N-substituents such as dodemorph, tridemorph, aldimorph, fenpropimorph, amorolfine, and fenpropidin, currently marketed as fungicides, act via the inhibition of these two enzymes (Mercer, E.I., Bio chem. Soc. Trans. 19: 788-308 (1991)). This conclusion stems in part from the observation that substrates for the enzymes build up in fungal cells treated with low levels of the fungicides. However, it recently has been found that the sterol .DELTA.8-7 isomerase gene is not essential for viability in S. cerevisiae (Ashman, W. H., et al., Lipids 26: 628-632 (1991)), suggesting that the killing effect of morpholine fungicides may be primarily the result of sterol .DELTA.14 inhibition.